I have been having a look through many posts and researching about US Airways departure and arrival times at LGW for a while now but still there are some things that puzzle me about their former services at LGW. From a peak in the Summer of 2002, there was 4 services per day; 2 x PHL, 1 x CLT and 1 x PIT. This then reduced to 3 services per day after that, as one of the Philadelphia routes ended. Now there are many different departure times I've seen for these flights except one which I always see the same times; Pittsburgh - US740 arrives Gatwick 05:55 and US741 which departs Gatwick at 11:15. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

However, the Philadelphia flights are not easy to understand. I've seen LGW-PHL departure times such as 11:30, 11:45, 12:15, 12:30, 14:25, 14:45 and 14:55. This really confuses me, were these two different flights and in different years or where the departure times changed alot?

US098 from Philadelphia, it seems, was always scheduled to arrive at Gatwick also at 05:55, so if the PHL and PIT flights arrive at 05:55 and the departure times for the PHL and PIT flights are 11:15 onwards, that's a ground time of
5 hours or more at Gatwick on a daily basis. If this is correct, how could US Airways afford to keep these aircraft on the ground for so long at LGW and why did they need to spend that long at LGW? It must have
cost US Airways and LGW alot of money if they are occupying gates for so long?

I would appreciate any feedback about this and also hopefully some answers to my questions.

Quoting JosephJarvis (Thread starter):If this is correct, how could US Airways afford to keep these aircraft on the ground for so long at LGW and why did they need to spend that long at LGW? It must have
cost US Airways and LGW alot of money if they are occupying gates for so long?

1) Round trip, the flying time is barely outside of 16 hours, so the planes need to sit somewhere for 8 hours per day or so; and

2) The cost of parking an aircraft at any given airport is highly exaggerated on a.net. We calculated a couple of years ago that you could keep a plane sitting all day at the world's most expensive airports for barely $1,000. Most are far less than that.

The PHL departure times.
11:30, 11:45, 12:15, 12:30 - would be one flight and
14:25, 14:45 and 14:55 would be the second PHL departure.

The times varied for many reasons some I can remember are:

1. Different aircraft making up the departing/return flight. Sometimes for repositioning for various reasons the departing PHL
flight would be the inbound CLT flight. This would allow the aircraft from PHL to return to CLT where the Maint. Base was for the Widebody equipment at that time. Also could be a scheduling requirement/equipment positioning.

2. Times were sometimes adjusted for Headwinds, which would require an earlier departure time. On occasion we would delay a flight departing to the UK, because tailwinds.

3. FIS/Customs - When headwinds or tailwinds were significant enough aircraft would arrive before the FIS/Customs areas would be open, so we would rather keep the passengers in the airport terminal rather than keep them onboard an aircraft after a long flight.

4. There are times when the banks of flights would be adjusted at the hub station, so to maintain the integrity of the connections the inbound departure time was adjusted.

I am gong off my memory and I worked the Intl flights in CLT from 1990-1998.

Thanks for the excellent post, MSYPI7185! Very interesting insider perspective.

JosephJarvis, the 5-hour ground time for U.S.-based aircraft is not that unusual, especially in London. Many flights from the U.S., especially those coming from the Northeast (BOS, NYC, PHL, even IAD) arrive in London in the wee hours of the morning--5:30-7 a.m., which is actually perfect timing for either heading into the city to do business or make connections on the first flights of the day to Eastern Europe and other destinations.

The same is true on the return. Those Eastern European flights leave early in the a.m. to arrive LON late morning. Then U.S. bound flights depart late morning/early afternoon to arrive in the U.S. mid-afternoon. That makes perfect timing for a late afternoon/early evening bank of connections to the U.S. West Coast for a nighttime arrival.

The cost of keeping the plane on the ground is negligible compared to the increased revenue from eastbound and westbound connections.

"We hope you've enjoyed flying with us as much as we've enjoyed taking you for a ride."

JosephJarvis, the 5-hour ground time for U.S.-based aircraft is not that unusual, especially in London. Many flights from the U.S., especially those coming from the Northeast (BOS, NYC, PHL, even IAD) arrive in London in the wee hours of the morning--5:30-7 a.m., which is actually perfect timing for either heading into the city to do business or make connections on the first flights of the day to Eastern Europe and other destinations.

The same is true on the return. Those Eastern European flights leave early in the a.m. to arrive LON late morning. Then U.S. bound flights depart late morning/early afternoon to arrive in the U.S. mid-afternoon. That makes perfect timing for a late afternoon/early evening bank of connections to the U.S. West Coast for a nighttime arrival.

The cost of keeping the plane on the ground is negligible compared to the increased revenue from eastbound and westbound connections.

I totally agree about MSYPI7185, thank you for the information.

Also thank you UALFAson for your information as well, some very interesting points. Alot of the US Airlines serving Gatwick all used to depart morning/early afternoon. By around 3pm nearly all of them had left.

I wonder if anyone knows the correct departure times of any US flights at Gatwick.